A CROQUET PARTY.
The Rushtons lived in a big old red brick house close to the town hall
in what was still called the market-place of Farafield, though all the
meaner hubbub of the market had long ago been banished to the square
behind, with its appropriate buildings. It was a house of the time of
Queen Anne, with rows of glittering windows surmounted by a pediment,
and though it was in the center of the town a fine old walled garden
behind. To Lucy this garden seemed the brightest place imaginable when
she was led into it through the shady passages of the old house, the
thick walls and rambling arrangement of which defended it from the
blazing of the August skies, which penetrated with pitiless heat and
glare the naked walls of the Terrace, built without any consideration of
atmospheric changes. Mrs. Rushton’s drawing-room was green and cool--all
the venetian blinds carefully closed on one side, and on the other
looking out upon the trees and shady lawn where two or three young
people, girls in light dresses and young men scarcely less summer-like
in costume, were playing croquet. These were the days when croquet
still reigned on all lawns and country places, and nobody had as yet
discovered that it was “slow.” The party was of the usual orthodox kind.
There was a young, a very young curate in a long black coat and a
wide-awake, and a second young man in light clothes with his hands in
his pockets, whom Lucy’s inexperienced eyes with difficulty
distinguished from Raymond Rushton; and two or three girls, one of them
the daughter of the house, Emma, a shy hoyden of sixteen. All these
young people looked with great curiosity at Lucy as she followed Mrs.
Rushton out of the house in her black frock, Jock clinging closely to
her. Jock, though he had a great deal of self-possession on ordinary
occasions, was shy in such an unusual emergency as this. He had never
been at a garden party, he was not used to society, and he did not know
how to play croquet, in all which points Lucy was almost as uninstructed
as he. There was a tea-table set out under an old mulberry-tree, with
garden-chairs and rugs spread out upon the grass. Nothing could be more
pleasant, cool, leisurely, and comfortable. It was indeed a scene such
as might be seen on a summer afternoon in almost every garden with a
good-sized house attached to it, with a lawn and a mulberry-tree,
throughout England. But then Lucy was not much acquainted with such
places, and to her everything was new. They all stood and looked at her
as she followed Mrs. Rushton across the grass--looked at her with inward
sighs and wonderings. To think she should be so rich, while none of the
others had anything to speak of. It did not perhaps go so far as actual
envy; but it was certainly surprise, and a bewildered question why such
good fortune should have fallen to an inconsiderable girl, and not at
all to the others who might have been supposed able to make so much more
use of it. The young men could not help feeling that the enjoyment which
they could have extracted out of so much money would have been far more
than anything a girl could derive from it. Not one of the three perhaps
went any further, or at least went so far as to ask whether there were
any means by which he could appropriate such a fortune, except indeed
Raymond, who was in a most uncomfortable state, knowing that his mother
intended him to begin at once to “pay attention” to Lucy, and not
knowing in the least how to begin. Lucy was put into the most
comfortable chair, as if she had been a dowager, and even Jock was wooed
as he had never been wooed before.
“Oh, you will soon learn how to play,” all the young people said in a
chorus; “it is very easy.”
Lucy thought they were all very kind, and she thought the lawn a kind of
little paradise, with all the sights and sounds of the ruder world shut
out.
“Emmie and I almost live here,” Mrs. Rushton said. “We bring out our
work in the morning; you can’t think how pleasant it is. I wish, my dear
Lucy, that it could have been arranged that you should live with your
guardian instead of those good relations of yours. They are very nice,
but it is always more cheerful where there are young people. I wish it
could be managed. The Fords are excellent people; but they are in a
different rank of society. I was speaking to Mr. Rushton about it, but
he does not seem to think anything can be done; men are so entirely
without resources. You may depend upon it I should find some way in
which it could be done, if it depended on me.”
“I don’t think it could be done, Mrs. Rushton; it is all very exact in
the will.”
“Then I suppose you stand up very firmly by the will--in every
particular, my dear?” Mrs. Rushton said, with a significant look.
“How could I help it?” said Lucy. She preferred looking at the croquet
to discussing the will, and she wished Raymond would go and play, and
not stand by her chair, looming over her. His mother looked at him from
time to time, and when these appeals were made he took his hands out of
his pockets and grew red and cleared this throat. But nothing ever came
of it. Lucy did not know what to say to this embarrassed young man; he
seemed so much further off from her by being so much nearer than Sir
Tom. At length, she asked with some diffidence, “Are you not going to
play?”
“Oh, my mother thought you would like--to walk round the garden.”
“You goose!” cried his mother. “The fact is, Lucy, Ray thought you would
like to see all the old-fashioned corners. They are not like the gardens
at the Hall. Oh, we don’t pretend to anything so fine; but we have heaps
of flowers, and I think that is the chief thing. Ray is devoted to the
garden--he wants so much to show you round.”
And a few minutes after Lucy found herself walking by Ray, who was very
shy, and had not a notion what to say to her, nor had she what to say to
him. He took her along a commonplace path, and showed her the
flower-beds--that is to say, he intimated, with a wave of his hand and a
blush, that here were the roses, and there--“I’m sure I don’t know what
you call these things,” Ray said.
“Are you not very fond of flowers, then? I thought Mrs. Rushton--”
“Oh, yes, I’m very fond of them--some, you know; but I never can
remember the names; it is like songs-- I’m very fond of music, but I
never can remember the words.”
This was a long speech, and he felt better after it. However little
inclined you may feel to do your duty, there is a sense of satisfaction
in having done it. “Do you sing?” he added, emboldened by his own
success.
“No,” Lucy said; and then the poor young fellow was balked, and the path
which seemed to be opening before him was cut suddenly short. He gave a
sigh of disappointment, and plunged his hands deeper than ever into his
pockets to seek inspiration there.
“Mamma thinks we should go out to-morrow,” he said.
“Yes?” This monosyllable was interrogative, and gave him encouragement.
He cleared his throat again.
“I could show you some very nice rides--the way to the picnic on
Thursday is very pretty. Were you ever at the old abbey at Burnside?
Quantities of people go--”
“I have passed it,” said Lucy, “when we rode at school.”
“Oh, did you ride at school? I don’t think that could be much fun--all
girls. Picnics are not very much fun either.”
“I never saw one. I should think it would be nice,” said Lucy, with some
doubt.
“Oh, well, perhaps if you were never at one before-- I dare say it will
be nice when--when _you_ are there, Miss Trevor,” said Ray, growing very
red; “but then you see I never went with you before.”
Lucy looked at him with some surprise, totally unable to divine why he
should flourish so wildly the croquet-mallet he was carrying, and blush
and stammer so much. She was entirely unaware that she had assisted at
the production of Raymond’s first compliment. She took it very quietly,
not knowing its importance.
“My mother thinks Emmie can ride,” he went on, after a confused pause;
“but she can’t a bit. Some girls are famous--take fences, and everything
you can put before them. There are the Morton girls-- I suppose you know
the Mortons?”
“I don’t know any one--except the girls who were at school.”
“Oh, there were some great swells, were there not,” said Raymond, “at
that school?”
Perhaps for the first time Lucy felt a little pleasure in repeating the
names of her school-fellows, information which Raymond received with
awe.
“That’s a cut above us,” he said; “they were all awfully angry at home
because the old ladies wouldn’t have Emmie. I suppose you were
different.”
“It was because of my having so much money,” said Lucy, calmly. “Oh, but
you need not laugh. Mrs. Stone said a girl with a great deal of money
wanted more training.”
“I can’t see that,” cried Raymond; “not a bit. It doesn’t take much
education to spend a great fortune, when a fellow has to make his own
way like me; I should think there was nothing so jolly as to have a lot
of money, so much that you never could get through it; by Jove! I wonder
how it feels,” he said, with a laugh. To this question, if it was a
question, Lucy made no reply. It was the subject upon which she could
talk best; but she was not a great talker, and Raymond was a kind of
being very far off from her, whom she did not understand.
“I don’t think there is much more to see,” he said; “there is not much.
I can’t think what my mother meant to show you in the garden. Would you
like to go back and try a game? I’ll teach you, if you like. I suppose I
may say you will ride to the picnic? Emmie will go (as well as she knows
how), and I--”
“If Jock may come, too.”
“Oh,” cried Raymond, “there will be no want of chaperons, you know. My
mother is coming, and no doubt some more old ladies. It will be all
right, you know,” said the youth with a laugh. This speech made Lucy
ponder, but confused her mind rather than enlightened it. She went back
to the lawn with him into the midst of the croquet-players, with very
little more conversation, and Mrs. Rushton, looking on anxiously,
gnashed her teeth behind the tea-urn. “He did not seem to me to find a
word to say to her,” she lamented afterward; “what’s the good of
spending all that money on a boy’s education, if at the end of it he
can’t say a word for himself.” And her husband answered with those
comforting words which husbands have the secret of. “You had much better
let scheming alone,” he said. “You will put me in a false position if
you don’t mind, and you’ll never do any good to yourself.” We are
ashamed to say the monosyllable was “Stuff!” which Mrs. Rushton replied.
But the afternoon was very pleasant to Lucy; and Jock enjoyed it too,
after awhile, learning the game much more quickly than his sister, and
getting into an excitement about it which she did not share. The little
fellow remained in the foreground brandishing a mallet long after the
party had melted away, and took possession of the lawn altogether,
tyrannizing over the little Rushtons, when Lucy was taken in to dinner
with the grown-up members of the family. “Mrs. Rushton says you may come
with me, Jock,” Lucy said; but Jock resisted strenuously. “It is only
when you go we can have a real game; you are all duffers,” said the
little boy, with a contempt which he was much in the habit of showing to
his sister. Thus they were launched upon life and society in Farafield.
Mrs. Rushton proposed the brougham to Lucy when the time came to go
home, but, on hearing that she would prefer to walk, declared that she
too was dying for a little fresh air, and that the cool of the evening
was delightful. Then they sallied forth in a body, Raymond by Lucy’s
side. It was all very pleasant. He was not a brilliant talker, indeed,
but Lucy did not want anything very brilliant, and what with the little
pricks and stimulants provided by his mother, who walked behind, Raymond
excelled himself. It was cheerful even to see the little party making
its way along the cool twilight ways, with soft interchange of voices
and laughter, little Jock again holding his sister’s hand, while Raymond
was skillfully poked and bantered into talk. If it was a scheme it was
not very deeply laid, and meant nothing cruel. Would not Raymond Rushton
be a perfectly good match for her, should it come to pass? and why
should not Raymond have the great fortune as well as another? His mother
felt all the glow of virtuous consciousness in her breast. He was a good
son, and would make a good husband. In every way, even in respect to
family and position, old Trevor’s daughter in marrying Raymond would do
very well for herself.